Are You Evolving As Fast As Your Customers?

Tami Cannizzaro has some actionable advice for anyone tasked with marketing a product or service: Keep moving.

Cannizzaro, senior director of marketing for eBay’s Enterprise unit, warns that consumers are constantly changing — and that effective marketing campaigns are agile enough to keep pace with them.

Cannizzaro is fearless about social media in all its many incarnations, and thinks its better to try the latest platform than remain paralyzed in the past. She shared some of her words of wisdom at CMSWire's inaugural DX Summit in Chicago.

'You're Still Doing Twitter Chats?'

"It's interesting … the profession of marketing isn't an evolving as quickly as consumer behavior. And so I think a lot of us, including myself, are finding we're often a foot behind because, really, consumer behavior is changing every day."

"I come into the office and there's a new data point that's showing us that people have changed the way they interact with the Internet, the way they interact with brands. So the latest one is that people aren't going to Google search as much on their mobile devices. They're going right to applications.

"So what does that mean for your for your marketing buys, for your media buys? There are huge implications. And social media has just really changed the whole landscape. The next generation just has a new way of working.

"Sometimes what I see with marketing organizations is that there's a tendency to "do marketing" the way we've done it for ten years. The reality is that if you're doing marking the way you were doing ten years ago, you're probably off in terms of your whole approach to marketing.

"A few months ago the hot new thing was Facebook added video format and I've started to see these video, TV-type commercials come on. Well, you know, if you're still worried about doing Twitter chats, well, that was hot five years ago.

"What's now? What's now? What's now?

"You really sort of need to stay ahead of the curve a little bit and be ready to take a little risk and pilot. Some of these platforms may not take off. They may not work. But in my mind it's better to move and test as opposed to being a little bit stuck in the old school way.

"Even though I work for a larger brand and a larger company, I like to meet with start-ups and understand what they're doing. What agency are you using? What techniques do you use? Start-ups tend to have very small budgets and they really need to be nimble and quick and ahead of the curve. So I sort of like to hang with that crowd a little bit."